This book kept me reading right down to the last page. Art Hardin is a believable private eye -- he's middle-aged and married with three kids. No Tom Selleck or Pierce Brosnan type stuff here, unless you count perhaps his wit. His wry "comments" on the situations he gets into kept me laughing even as the mystery got more and more puzzling. He starts out a routine case that should be boring -- finding a widowed businessman's old college girlfriend. However, the young lady turns up dead shortly after Art locates her, and Art finds himself being followed. After his office is broken into and child porn is planted there for the police to find, our hero stands to lose his career and possibly even his wife.

I found this book easier to follow than Bailey's first novel, plus Art's relationship with his wife gave the story a human touch for me. I highly recommend it. If you enjoy it as much as I did, do a search on Yahoo for the Art Hardin fan club, and we'll discuss the books!

Most people find pleasure in being part of the wildness of a natural environment. There is a diversity and complexity that fascinates and inspires awe. Yet, what makes up the uniqueness of a particular environment has been debated for a long time. Most often when looking at nature we try to see the parts as stable entities rather than the dynamics of whole system.

In this book, Dr. Bailey has taken a Geographers prospective of looking at the whole and then showing how the parts fit together. His solution of this world scale jigsaw puzzle has produced an unmatched insight into ecosystem structure and function. He explains how regional ecosystem boundaries are a function of climate properties that provide the energy to sustain life. At a different scale, other inputs from geology, soil, watershed, and physiography temper the mix of life forms that form an ecosystem.

Throughout this book the emphasis is on spatial relationships among the components that make up ecosystems. However these are not static systems because, at all scales, spatial units of ecosystems and their processes also interact to provide life sustaining natural services.

This is one science book that is easy to read because Dr. Bailey took a great deal of care to explain his reasoning using familiar terms. There is an excellent glossary to explain concepts contained in those words that are not so familiar. Numerous pictures and illustrations clearly present the many ecosystem concepts covered in this book. Finally, a map inside the back cover illustrates the Ecoregions of the Continents.

An outstanding discourse on education as more than the preparation for a job or career. This book joins the spiritual with the everyday material idea of education and presents education as an on-going discovery of the divine in everyday life, a way not merely to earn a living but also to truly and fully live.

This book is a great way to pass the time and learn about the history of the Jersey Shore. John Bailey Lloyd loaded his book with details and great pictures of the early days of Long Beach Island. It's an easy read and truly a relaxing book.

The book "An English Madam" by Paul Bailey is based on the life of Cynthia Payne--the infamous British madam who gained a fair amount of notoriety after the police raided her Christmas party in December 1978. Guests--in various states of undress--were discovered in most of the rooms in the house. Men lined the stairs waiting for the bedrooms to become available. Pornographic films with inventive titles, and various whips and leather straps were removed from the home. These items later appeared in court as evidence against Cynthia Payne--or Madam Cyn as she is also known. Vouchers were also confiscated, for it seems that male guests who paid an entrance fee of 25 pounds were awarded these little vouchers for alcohol, food, entertainment, and the 'company' of a female guest of their choice.

The raid, and the subsequent trial, resulted in a prison sentence for Cynthia, but it also brought her into the headlines. Payne's charming frankness, ready wit, and out-spoken attitude towards sex both entertained and shocked. Bailey's book explores Cynthia's childhood, her difficult teenage years, her relationships with men, and her career as a prostitute and a brothel madam. Through it all, Cynthia frankly admits her past with a refreshing and unabashed candour.

Cynthia was born in 1932. She was the oldest of two girls, and her father was absent for most of her childhood. Ironically he returned and settled down just before Cynthia's mother died. Cynthia was rarely shown affection by her father, and they clashed constantly. He was openly ashamed of Cynthia and unable to communicate with her with any sort of intimacy. It's really not surprising that Cynthia left home at the first opportunity. She engaged in a series of disastrous relationships with older men who used and abandoned her. Despite all of the terrible hardships experienced by Cynthia, she manages to relate everything with humour and good natured tolerance. Many people would have become bitter, but somehow Cynthia managed to remain almost untouched by the disappointments. Ultimately, I think this is due to the fact that she always understood her lovers--faults included. She accepted them as the flawed human beings they were, and she didn't bear a grudge for all their shortcomings. She accepted everyone--no matter what faults they had, or what quirks they exhibited.

Cynthia's first contact with prostitution came when she was working as a waitress. She was approached by a prostitute who wanted to use Cynthia's room during the daytime, and Cynthia agreed as she collected as much money for one day's rent as she earned waitressing for an entire week. From this modest beginning, she concocted a scheme to sublet rooms and flats to prostitutes. This plan failed when the rents owed to Cynthia went unpaid, and Cynthia found herself facing her landlord without the rent money. He was quite happy to make an alternative arrangement, and so Cynthia became a prostitute--specializing in "the kinky rich" older gentlemen.

The book plots Cynthia's course through her many relationships--including the rather unusual relationship she enjoyed with Retired RAF Squadron Leader Mitchell Smith. One chapter is devoted to letters from various would-be admirers applying for posts in her household. The highly-readable book also contains black and white photos of Cynthia and her many friends.

There are two films about the life of Cynthia Payne. "Wish You Were Here" focuses on her childhood and teenage years, and it really is a marvellous film. There are no references in this film to Cynthia or her later career as a Madam. The second film, "Personal Sevices" details Cynthia's adult life up until the trial for the raided 1978 Christmas Party. Many of the characters in "An English Madam" appear in "Personal Services"--although the names are changed. For further reading, the book, "Sexplicity Yours: The Trial of Cynthia Payne" by Gloria Walker and Lynne Daly details the trial for a 1986 raid on yet another of Cynthia's parties. This newsworthy party was ostensibly thrown to celebrate the filming of "Personal Services"----displacedhuman.

Contains all of the primary epicurean texts plus the complete De Rerum Natura by Lucretius. The introduction is one of the best I have ever read. A bargain.

Let me say at the outset that Epicurus is hard to understand because we have only fragments of his work.

Epicurus is important to people living in the third millenium because he realized, as most of us do, that traditional religion is not very believable.

In his time the Hellenistic and Roman world was about to fall into a morass of Eastern religions, spiritualism, and superstition familiar to third millenium people living amid Tibetan and Zen Buddhism, Wicca, and New Age.

Epicurus has two huge virtues that make him worth reading even now.

He is ferociously smart for one. Some of his insights about physical phenomena millenia before the invention of real scientific instruments are astonishing.

The other is that he is unrelentingly honest and rigorous. His premise is that we only know what we can find out from our senses and our reason. This is immensely liberating from all the causistry, tradition, authority, and sentiment of both culture and counter-culture.

To the ultimate rationalization for religion, "Well, it is a comfort for the simple." he responds, "Truth and honesty are better than comfort." He dismissed death as nothing, and proved his point by showing legendary courage in facing his own.

Faith is often viewed very subjectively with
greatly varied results. This book talks
about real life application and practicality
that will change your life.
I highly recommend it.

This book was enthralling from the first story of Denny who created his own family by choice, through all of the research and historical background of kinship and what it means to us as humans, up to and including all of the examination of the black culture and their ability to bond and form families without blood ties. I thought this book is a must read for anyone who is trying to cope with today's fragmented society that confounds our need to belong in a connected family. Ms. Ahern and Dr. Bailey obviously compliment each other as co-authors blending Ms. Ahern's dramatic personal stories with Dr. Bailey's reseach that fills in the link from a scientific perspective. The content in this book is ground breaking and it would not suprise me if someone like Oprah or the New York Times picks up this book and gives it very broad and favorable coverage

This is a great book!
I followed the fasting advice and found it easy yet highly effective. The author covers all aspects of fasting including physical, emotional, mental and spiritual. This is one of the best books on fasting on the market.